Month: July 2009

If you enjoy watching cooking shows on TV but wish that there were a show just for celiacs, just turn the Internet into your personal gluten-free TV. You have so many options you can’t watch them all! Here are some places to start viewin’ and chewin’:

Lovin’ From the Oven is a website run by Bobby and Barbee with several videos demonstrating how to make various classic American gluten-free dishes: almond-crusted salmon with a citrus sauce, Southwestern stuffed peppers, potato onion casserole, and strawberry swirl cheesecake, etc. The recipes are also listed on the site.

Elana’s Pantry, one of our community gluten-free blogs, hosts two videos: one on how to make bluberry muffins with coconut flour, and the other on vegan gluten free chocolate chip cookies.

Gluten Free Kiwi Dot Com posted a whopping 33 videos, some of which are recipes (pizza, New Zealand love cake, gnocchi, and breakfast), and some of which are commentary on travel or how to set up a gluten-free kitchen.

I’ve long enjoyed Tandoori chicken, the subject of today’s post, at Indian restaurants. But first – a quick caveat. As we discussed in our last post, Indian restaurants often cook Tandoori chicken in ovens known as Tandoors, which leads to cross-contamination issues as these ovens also cook the gluten-containing Indian bread naan. Therefore, always talk to your waiter before ordering this dish at an Indian restaurant. Read our last post for more details. Or, for an equally enjoyable culinary experience, just cook the chicken for yourself at home, like Kay did last week.

Kay’s recipe used a different mix of spices, so her Tandoori chicken didn’t quite achieve its trademark bright-red hue. But nonetheless, it was thoroughly flavorful, maintaining the chicken’s greasy texture while a reddish-yellow matte of spices soaked into the outside of its skin. The heat was far from overwhelming and complemented the chicken’s flavor and texture. This, along with basmati rice and some palak makhani (see below), made for an excellent weekday lunch, and would surely suffice as a tasty and delicious family dinner.

This creamy spinach dish, known as palak makhani, blended perfectly with our tender Tandoori chicken and white rice. Want to know how to make it? Next week we'll show you how.

Cut score marks into chicken, to facilitate marinating process. Place in large freezer bag and set aside.

3/4 t salt

1 t ground cumin

1 t ground coriander

1 t ground cinnamon

1/2 t paprika (I used pimente d’Espelette)

1/2 t turmeric

1 to 1 1/2 t chili powder

10 turns fresh ground black pepper

1 c whole milk plain yogurt

juice of one fresh lime

1 T finely-minced fresh ginger

2 minced cloves of garlic

Mix the all the above ingredients in a bowl, then pour into the freezer bag with the chicken. Squeeze out as much air from the bag as possible, then seal. Massage chicken through the bag to make sure the marinade penetrates as deeply as possible. (The nice thing about this step is that you don’t have to get your hands dirty!) Refrigerate overnight, if possible. Though I’ve let it marinate as little as a couple hours. The taste won’t be as strong, but if you’re in a hurry, it’ll do.

Tandoori chicken, freshly marinated and ready for the grill.

When done marinating, shake marinade off chicken, and cook on a hot grill pan (cast iron works great). Cook both sides until the pieces touching the grill are slightly charred. If the chicken is cooked on the outside, but not inside, put into an oven safe dish and cook at 350F until it’s cooked throughout, usually 10 minutes.

We’d love to hear what you think of this recipe. If any of you have tried making Tandoori chicken in the past or have any other dining out tips to share, let us know!

Gooey, chewy lasagna may have originated in Italy, but by now almost every American household has whole-heartedly embraced this delicious rectangular entrée. And there’s no reason the gluten-free community can’t enjoy this dish; there are a ton of ways to eat lasagna without wheat. Among the blogging community, Tinkyada GF lasagna noodles are the clear winner in recipe after recipe, but if you’re looking to skip the GF substitutions, we’ve collected a number of recipes that don’t require noodles at all!

Bonzai Aphrodite offers us a Vegan Polenta Lasagna. She uses vegan cream cheese, which can be difficult for the non-urban to find.

Just weeks after introducing it, Starbucks has pulled the plug on its gluten-free Valencia Orange Cake. Gluten-free consumers lauded the pastry, citing its great taste and sticky texture as reasons to include Starbucks in their morning coffee routine. And now, said the company through its Twitter page, the cake is no more. We, along with most of you, were left scratching our heads.

The pastry was first unveiled in early May of this year. A Starbucks media representative told me at the time that the cake was the result of the massive amount of requests the company received through its customer service website, MyStarbucksIdea.com. On the site, “gluten-free pastry” was the number one “idea” customers wished Starbucks to act upon. And so, Starbucks did the design work, and released its gluten-free Valencia Orange Cake last May, along with much press and publicity.

A past review on our blog praised its sticky, sweet texture and highlighted it as one of the few pastries we’ve tried that didn’t flake apart with every bite in typical, gluten-free fashion. But what really knocked our socks off about this cake was its availability. Though some of you reported that it didn’t quite make it to your local Starbucks, many on our blog said the cake turned them into regular Starbucks customers, enabling them to frequent one of the coffee shop’s 11,000 nationwide locations for breakfast or perhaps an afternoon snack.

To see this cake disappear only a few short weeks after its launch is baffling and perplexing. Several Starbucks locations in our area told us that the cake sold out daily; many of you have reported this as well, though others said shortages were apparent. Tiffany Janes, Atlanta Gluten-Free Food Examiner, cited quality control problems in the Atlanta area as a major factor for its disappearance; no such problems could be found in our local Washington, D.C. locations as well as in most other parts of the country.

This delicious pastry made the lives of many people with celiac disease easier, and, quite frankly, we are among the thousands of consumers nationwide who disagree and are dissatisfied with Starbucks’s decision to remove the pastry. Any problems with quality or availability should have been ironed out. Gluten-free consumers expect and demand more, especially from a company like Starbucks, which so often touts its community involvement.

In only one week, 3,500 people have signed it, and we encourage you to do the same. Once we reach 5,000 signatures, we will forward it to Starbucks, to urge them to bring back their gluten-free pastry. Please, forward this petition to your friends and family as well, even those who don’t have celiac disease.

This pastry was a great help to the gluten-free community, and its presence in thousands of stores nationwide will be sorely missed.

Over the next few weeks, along with our regular helping of product reviews, restaurant reviews and gluten-free news, Triumph Dining will be posting about Indian food, a cuisine with ingredients that are often mysterious and unfamiliar to the gluten-free consumer. You’ll be surprised to find that most Indian food can be enjoyed entirely gluten-free.

In the first installment of our series, we take you to Haandi Indian Cuisine, a typical Indian restaurant, to show you the ins and outs of making sure your meal is safe and delicious.

Haandi’s main dining room was laid out like I expect most Indian restaurants might – white walls with mirrors, neat in appearance, white tablecloths, waiters eager to refill your rapidly diminishing water glasses. Haandi also shared a common feature many Indian restaurants now boast – a lunch buffet, complete with five stainless-steel pots containing foods varying greatly in taste, ingredients and seasonings.

When we sat down, we immediately asked the manager if any of the dishes contained gluten. His response would irk even the most seasoned gluten-free restaurant pros. “Gluten? What’s gluten? Isn’t that in Chinese food?”

Gulp.

When faced with a waiter, chef or manager at an Indian restaurant who’s never heard the word gluten in his life, don’t panic! All will be okay. But before you order, be sure to do the following.

Pass over our Dining Card for Indian Cuisine (shown below), which lists Indian ingredients that often contain gluten and more precautions chefs should take when preparing food that’s gluten-free. The directions are listed in English on the front and Hindi on the back.

Explain to him that wheat, barley and oats contain gluten. We don’t necessarily suggest you mention rye. Why? Rye is an ingredient that’s almost unheard of in India. (In fact, when we created our Dining Card for Indian Cuisine, we consulted with three Hindi translators, none of whom knew what rye was!) Another common mistake – rye is often confused with the identically-pronounced Indian spice rai, which is safe for your consumption.

Finally, be sure to ask if the restaurant has a tandoori oven or tandoor. A tandoor is an extremely hot clay oven used to cook tandoori dishes as well as the wheat-based naan, an Indian flatbread. Often times, chefs will slap the naan onto the sides of the oven when cooking it, creating a “poof!” of flour and a near guarantee for cross-contamination with other dishes inside. Some Indian restaurants have tandoori ovens, others don’t. If your Indian restaurant does not have a tandoori oven, cross-contamination generally is not an issue, but be sure to check with the chef beforehand.

The reverse side of our Dining Card for Indian Cuisine lists, in Hindi, precautions chefs should take when preparing a gluten-free meal. Flip it over, and these same directions are written out in English.

This might seem like a lot to handle, but Indian food is unique in that it is among the few types of cuisines that rarely has hidden sources of gluten. We discussed the main cross-contamination issue earlier. Another gluten-containing ingredient, a spice known as hing (which is listed on our dining card), also causes problems from time to time, as it is often milled with wheat.

As it turned out, Haandi did have a tandoori oven, making the tandoori chicken entrée in the buffet off-limits. However, the other dishes in the buffet – aloo gobi, dal makhani, saag paneer and chicken tikka – were gluten-free, the chef told us. We sampled them, and all were tasty and delicious. We’ll delve into each of these dishes over the next few weeks and show you how to make them, along with our usual helping of product reviews, restaurant reviews and gluten-free news.

Though we were disappointed that Haandi didn’t offer gluten-free tandoori chicken, it’s a dish that’s easy-to-make at home and tomorrow we’ll show you how.

Are there any other fans of Indian cuisine out there? What are you concerned about when you eat gluten-free at an Indian restaurant? We’d love to answer any questions in later posts in this series so let us know!